The convoy lights revealed pale faces, thin and weak bodies of people in desperate need of food, shivering in the freezing cold.
Minutes later, a second convoy, without lights or sirens, drove to Dong Muang, a military airport.
As a military convoy passed, lights on the police car were flashing as if it were directing traffic.
A spokesperson for Alliant, which has annual sales of $3 billion, describes the innovation as a way for convoys and light armored vehicles to neutralize a bomb, essentially jamming it, before it can detonate.
It really got going when the cocaine kingpin stepped out of a convoy of six light aircraft that flew in for the event.
Take the convoy of Stryker light tanks that set out on October 12 from "Forward Operating Base Spin Boldak" in Khandar province for what was described as a "high-risk mission into uncharted territory". The convoy was led by the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected MRAPP) vehicles designed to resist the insurgent's weapon-of-choice in Afghanistan, roadside bombs.
"It's just really a logistical nightmare to work here," said Michael Doherty of the Army Corps of Engineers, a resident engineer on an oil infrastructure restoration in the south, who had led a convoy of pumps, lights and cranes across nearly impassable roads.
In late 1917, the High Seas Fleet began to conduct anti-convoy raids with light craft in the North Sea between Britain and Norway.
"A convoy, police with hazard lights, 'let's roll' – that kind of thing.
The marines, who had left here early on New Year's Day in a convoy of Humvees and light-armored vehicles, concluded without incident what was the most extensive American ground operation in a war that has been spearheaded by clusters of American Special Operations forces calling in satellite-guided bombs from high-altitude B-52's.
